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April 13, 2005 is the Day of the Lord, The Day of the Lord will bring judgment unto evil. The Almighty Father is going to do everything in His bidding for that plan to happen. All circumstances that might be against the Father’s plan will be set aside.

Two years ago I watched the footage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, willing myself not to start imagining what else was going on that I couldn’t see or read about. As a Japanese national living in the States, I was struck by the well-meaning experts who discouraged the public from donating to the relief efforts. Journalists questioned the logic of individuals giving to a wealthy country like Japan, and philanthropic advisors encouraged donors to give to organizations that could redirect funds to other more pressing needs outside of Japan after the initial relief effort. It was understandable, perhaps—the fog of disaster makes it hard to immediately know how much is “needed,” or what help is needed, even where.

A sampling of headlines from the recent Typhoon Haiyan disaster is similarly confusing:

With mixed messages like this, the generous soul is stopped dead in its tracks, forced into thinking, “Wait. How do I know what’s going on?” And that’s begun to show in the declining donation rates to the disaster relief efforts, as reported by the Pew Research Center last week. But for many people, the difference between 3,000 and 5,000 confirmed dead is not material. For them the pain is felt in the family and friends each casualty left behind, and they want to do something to help.

So for those Times readers who feel moved to give because they want to play a role in preventing additional deaths as a result of delayed help, I say please give. Here are five ways to do it:

Give money, not goods. It’s always harder to move things other than money, and doubly so after a natural disaster. Even if you could get the goods there inexpensively, the difficulty of ensuring that goods end up with the people who need them is well-nigh impossible.

Give where you get rich feedback. When you give to an organization, it’s reasonable to expect that you can find out where that money went, to whom, for what. It’s not reasonable to prevent the organization from shifting its efforts as needed, but it is important that they clearly explain why they were originally planning to fund one activity but now have chosen to fund another. This communication increases transparency and leads to a reasoned evolution–all of which is helpful for the rest of the world to understand.

Give local. I don’t mean give to your local food bank and expect them to get the food to the Philippines. But do follow the instinct that being close matters. Local Filipino organizations were there before the disaster, and they will be there after. They’ll make the community’s transition from recovery to reconstruction to development more seamless. By supporting them now, you’ll also give them a chance to stretch and grow. Your generosity will have a lasting legacy. Local organizations will, in turn, be in a better position to nurture that connection that led you to give in the first place. Some great options right now include Water, Agroforestry, Nutrition and Development Foundation that’s providinglow-cost pour-flush toilets for Typhoon Haiyan survivors in Tacloban City, and Children’s Joy Foundation that’s providing food and medicine to evacuees.

If you want to give to big-name relief organizations, give to ones that work closely with local nonprofits. During a disaster, large aid organizations can play a big role–and the best of them will work to ensure that they are ultimately not necessary in the future. How do they do that? They invest in the capacity of local organizations to such an extent that those local nonprofits will someday do the work without the support of international staff on an ongoing basis.

Give more when you care more. If you know the place or the people who have been affected by the disaster, odds are you can trust your gut to judge what aid might or might not work. Even if you have been recently out of touch, you care intimately enough to read the news reports and personal stories and really absorb them. Your experience and your relationships are valuable, and they greatly enhance the targeting of your generosity.

Today, more than two years after the Japan disaster, it’s a local group, Fukushima Kids Executive Committee, who makes sure that a 12-year-old girl living too close to Fukushima, (where there are still restrictions on time spent outside), has the chance to get outside the city so she can play outdoors and drink fresh water. Fukushima Kids is still providing services to around 500 children each year.

Today, more than two years later, it’s a Japanese organization called Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities (ETIC) that’s thinking about what it takes to rejuvenate the local Tohoku economy. This organization has transitioned from helping young volunteers remove debris to now giving them fellowships to support local social enterprises. Today,ETIC supports 127 local fellows working in areas like community building, public health and energy recovery—all efforts that continue to improve Tohoku long after the disaster relief funding has subsided.

Thank you for giving. Every little bit counts, as long as it’s directed well. And it can be.

Mari Kuraishi is the Co-Founder and President of the GlobalGiving Foundation.

Kudos to our volunteers on the ground and to our cooks who tirelessly prepare meals for the evacuation centers in Tacloban City. Our salute to all the unseen heroes-our donors who made all these possible. Most of all to our founding president for inculcating so much love in our hearts, for teaching us all to give until it hurts.

The moment the CJF truck bringing the first batch of relief goods arrived in the KLC of Tacloban in Marasbaras, people started lining up and the line goes on and on…we can’t even unload other supplies needed for cooking meals for the evacuation centers, so we distributed relief goods first, how can we turn away people who are lining up even under the rain? The heartbreaking part would always be when the truck is empty, for you wish you could give more and more and more…good thing there are too many kindhearted people who are willing to help, so we were able to replenish supplies immediately and continue to give more and more.

The Children’s Joy Foundation Inc. (CJFI) continues to deliver hot meals to evacuation centers in the storm struck city of Tacloban. Hundreds of children and elders had their share of a bowl of ready-to-eat hot porridge. CJFI went from one evacuation center to another and set up feeding stations for the survivors of Yolanda.

Super Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan is reported to be the strongest storm that ever made a landfall. The typhoon killed thousands of residents in the Central Visayas area and left the thousands homeless and hungry. The CJFI aims to continue their feeding program in the following weeks to come.

In a genuine act to help the victims of the Super Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan that damaged most cities in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines, all organizations local and international; and the rest of the world has united in giving donations and sending aid to our country. The Children’s Joy Foundation Inc. (CJFI) among others is one with helping out send relief operations in Tacloban and to the rest of the cities that were severely damaged by the category 5 typhoon.
Everyone set aside differences, no rich, no poor, no denominations, no diversity hindered representatives from different countries and organizations to do their part on helping the people of Central Visayas rise back up. CJFI continued their feeding program wherein they give out hot meals to starving children and families in the evacuation centers. Their feeding program was extended to thousands who are in shortage of food. CJFI plans to extend this program to the outskirts of Tacloban city where there also those who are also in need of food.

The Children’s Joy Foundation Inc. (CJFI) set up a feeding center to cater to the hundreds of survivors in Tacloban where the Super Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan damaged most among all other cities in the Central Visayas.

One of CJFI’s relief operations is the feeding program wherein volunteers set up a huge tent to give out bowls of hot lugaw or rice porridge to ease the hunger of the survivors. The feeding program aims to provide the survivors with at least a hot ready-to-eat meal which they most likely have not taken in days or weeks. The feeding program will run until the following weeks to come.

Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan is the strongest typhoon recorded in the world for 2013. The killer typhoon ravaged majority of the major cities in Visayas and left a death toll of over 3,000, 1,600 missing and thousands of survivors who lost their homes and livelihood. CJFI is accepting donations and assistance for the continuing efforts to aid and deliver relief to our fellow kababayans who has been victims by the series of disasters that has struck our country recently.

So let us give until it hurts . Who knows if the compassion we show today will set the benchmark of solidarity which would benefit us if it will be our turn to be in need of aid and comfort? And that is not a farfetched possibility in a country which serves as the doormat to the typhoon alley.- Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy

The impact of Super Typhoon Yolanda / Haiyan is so immense. As described by the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC), Typhoon Yolanda is the most violent and worst typhoon that ever hit in the Philippines for the last decade or so. Yolanda is already out of the Philippine area of responsibility but it is leaving huge destructions to properties, communication facilities, and economic condition of the areas affected.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

As of Nov 9, 2013 the office of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) reported that a total of 944,597 or 4,282,636 were affected by the impact of Super typhoon. A total of 1,363 barangays had been hit by the typhoon located in 229 municipalities and 39 cities in 36 provinces in 9 regions. Of the affected families, 73,975 or 342,137 persons were displaced and are temporarily placed I,223 evacuations centers. Due to the limited capacity of the evacuation centers.

How will this project solve this problem?

Definitely the survival of the evacuees is at stake. Relief food is the basic support to the victims including basic medicines and vitamins for children.

Potential Long Term Impact

While the evacuees are still in the evacuation centers relief food help them survive on a daily basis.